Fan supports are widely used in motor vehicles today to support electric fan motors driving an engine cooling fan. The supports typically extend across an engine or rear surface of an engine cooling radiator. The support can either be in the form of bracket or a fan shroud. A bracket is a substantially open structure. A fan shroud covers a portion of the rear surface to increase the flow of air drawn through the radiator by the fan. Fan supports are commonly formed from injection molded plastic.
The support is typically mounted to the radiator with a plurality of fasteners or other attaching elements. The fasteners may be bolts threaded into apertures in the radiator or an adjacent radiator support. Alternatively, there may be one or more threaded studs extending from the radiator or radiator support over which the support is placed with nut being threaded down to clamp the support in place. Yet another alternative is to provide a bayonet feature on the fan support engaging a receiving member on the radiator or radiator support.
Commonly, the motor support extends across the entire width of the radiator, and attaches to the radiator or the radiator support. However, in some applications the support extends only partially across the radiator. One of the difficulties with supports extending only partially across the radiator is that there is little structure available to adequately support the side terminating short of one of the radiator sides.
An object of this invention is to provide a fan support with an attaching feature of adequate strength that is easily located on and fixed to an upper portion of the radiator.